


you wish your bed was already made.

by carolinaa



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, or: josh's ptsd exists outside that one episode
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-29
Updated: 2019-04-29
Packaged: 2020-02-09 16:36:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18641926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carolinaa/pseuds/carolinaa
Summary: A car backfires. Josh spills coffee on his shirt. He's not one to generalize, but it's not shaping up to be a good morning.





	you wish your bed was already made.

**Author's Note:**

> can you believe it's 2019 and i'm posting WEST WING FANFIC! life really takes you on some wild rides huh
> 
> major tw for ptsd-induced panic attacks and general self-destructive and intrusive thoughts. be safe. i love u

It hasn’t been a good morning. 

A car backfires as he’s stepping up onto the curb and he flinches, so hard he splashes himself with coffee, so hard he stops breathing, so hard he finds himself three seconds later, still standing in the same spot like an idiot with coffee dripping off his face. 

He takes a breath and resumes moving, wipes coffee off his face and looks at his previously blue shirt and decides that’s a problem for when he isn’t late for a meeting with the Secretary of Agriculture. Well, it might be a problem right now, but--

He runs up the steps and the door slams behind him and he flinches again. He throws his mostly empty coffee cup away and looks down at his shirt, and yeah _ , damn,  _ that’s gonna be a problem right now. 

“Hey, Josh,” someone says. Well, someone  _ said _ , five seconds ago, and Josh has breezed past them, so it’s too late. With his luck, he’s ignored someone who’s going to assume something’s wrong with him and they’re going to call in a  _ trauma specialist _ again and he’s going to have to deal with that sometime soon. 

His shirt is dirty. 

A door slams to his left. He flinches.

“Donna, I need--” he says, barely at conversation-level volume, and she’s already put a file in his hand, so he closes his mouth. 

“Got in a fight with an espresso machine this morning?” she asks. 

Josh looks back down at his shirt. It’s dirty. “I have a meeting with Tribbey right now. It’s gonna be...shorter than scheduled.”

“He’s waiting in your office. Is it going to be shorter because you’re skipping it altogether?” Donna asks. Josh hasn’t been able to make eye contact with her yet today, he’s not sure if that’s a thing he normally does. What the hell is wrong with him right now? “Do you want a change of shirt?” she’s asked.

“Do I have one here that matches?” Josh asks. 

“No.” 

“Then can you go get one?”

“At seven you’re with--”

“I  _ know! _ ”

“Okay. Grumpy today. Meeting,” Donna says, and points. Josh sees Toby behind her, watching him, and realizes it was Toby that Josh had accidentally ignored earlier. 

Josh takes a deep breath and goes into his office. Toby he can deal with later.

 

“You wanna talk about it?” Leo asks him, and this can’t be happening right now.

“Talk about what?” Josh snaps. “There isn’t--it’s just Monday. I spilled coffee this morning and--”

“Is this like Christmas?”

“--Toby’s bored and--and making up gossip because Sam’s in charge of the Board of Governors speech and he has a few hours of free time,” Josh says, and then stops and looks at Leo. “Is  _ what _ like Christmas?”

Leo puts his pen down. “You had an episode at the Yo-Yo Ma performance and you broke a window in your apartment.”

“Yeah, I know what--” Josh rubs his eyes, lets out an exasperated laugh. “I obviously know what happened at Christmas! This isn’t a  _ thing _ , okay? Toby’s just--”

“This isn’t about Toby. He hasn’t said anything. You just look tired and your shirt’s--”

“My shirt’s dirty, yeah, I spilled coffee this morning--”

“How did Tribbey take that?”

“He thinks I’m hungover.”

“Are you?”

Josh looks at him, and looks down at his shirt. The stains have dried, but he can still  _ tell _ . “Yeah. You know what? I am. Won’t happen again.”

“Josh--”

“My bad.”

“ _ Josh-- _ ”

“Is there anything else?” He doesn’t know if Leo says something. Next thing he knows, Josh is swinging open the door and gone into the hall.

 

Everyone’s talking and there’s a voice yelling and someone’s playing music on a portable radio when he pushes through the double doors again, and Josh thinks he’s going to throw his stack of files down and scream. 

All he can hear are sirens. It’s all too much, and he can’t turn around and leave, all he can do is make a break for his office, but it’s so far away. He stumbles into someone, and can’t even check who it is, he just mumbles an apology. Before he can completely shut down, someone has a hand on the back of his neck and is steering him into an office and pushing him down onto the couch, and saying, “Josh,  _ breathe. _ ”

Josh chokes. 

“Breathe,” someone says again, and he coughs and claws at the hand on the back of his neck to try and get it off, the pressure’s killing him.

“Josh, you have three seconds before I call paramedics, and you don’t want this to be a big deal.”

Josh tears the hand away and looks up, his eyes watering. It’s Toby’s, the hand he’s now clutching. And, next to him, CJ. He doesn’t know which one of them was threatening him, but he doesn’t care. He just needs to get out. “Okay, thanks,” he wheezes. “I’m gonna--”

“You’re not.” CJ says. She gets up and closes the door softly enough that it doesn’t make a sound, and Josh doesn’t know if she did that on purpose or not.

They’re in Toby’s office; Josh recognizes the couch. He doesn’t remember the walk over here. He wonders how many people saw him.  

“Can you--” Toby says, Josh releases his hand, Toby looks noticeably relieved.

“Okay,” CJ says, like she’s going to try and talk about this. 

“I have a meeting,” Josh says, his voice shattered. He thinks his face is wet, but he doesn’t want to reach up and check. Should he check? Does he normally check?

“Donna’s rescheduling,” CJ tells him.

Even though his voice is giving out, he protests, “I have a meeting, I need to go, I need to go change before the meeting. It’s important, we scheduled a month out, my shirt is--”

“You need to  _ breathe _ ,” Toby says sharply. 

Josh snaps his mouth shut and inhales through his nose.

“Okay,” CJ says again, in the exact same way as before. “Josh, you’re going to be okay.”

“Yeah,” Josh says. “I’m okay  _ right now _ .”

“Are you?” Toby asks, and laughs. It’s not a good laugh. He’s nervous, Josh thinks. “Is that what you call freaking out to the point of a--to the point of collapse in the middle of the office?”

“I didn’t--”

CJ leans against the door. “Josh. We all saw you. We can’t have you doing that.”

Josh finally gives in and swipes at his face, and  _ yeah, _ dammit, he’s been crying. His nose is running. “Why, because the White House is gonna be embarrassed by me getting annoyed by some intern playing their damn  _ music  _ too loud? Yeah, might as well start drafting up the old resignation--”   
“That wasn’t you getting  _ annoyed _ , that was you having a flashback.”

“I  didn’t \--!”

“ _You_ _did!_ ”

“I’m going to my meeting,” Josh says darkly, and pushes off the couch to get to his feet. Toby holds up Josh’s briefing, out of reach, and CJ gets up and stands in front of the door. 

“Come  _ on _ !” Josh protests. Again, like they’ve been in the background, waiting, all he can hear are sirens getting louder and louder and drowning his voice out, so he talks louder to be heard over the noise. “I need to get stuff done, and so do both of you!”

“Breathe,” Toby reminds again, and Josh hates him.

He doesn’t know what to do to get the sirens to go away. He doesn’t know how to stop feeling like his chest is caving in on itself. He doesn’t know how he’s going to get CJ to move so he can get out the door. When this happens at home, he just goes to sleep for half an hour and it usually goes away, or he drinks, or he breaks something, but he has so much to  _ do _ —

CJ is in his way. Toby has his briefing. His shirt is dirty.

Josh takes a deep breath, suddenly feeling like he’s about to succumb to the tears that are still on his face. “Can someone tell Donna I’m not going to make it to my meeting?” 

CJ nods. “She already knows,” she says. 

“Right,” Josh says. He finds that he’s sitting on the couch again. He thinks CJ sat him down.

“Do you want the light off?” Toby asks.

“This is your office, don’t you need--”

“Light?” Toby presses.

“Off is fine,” Josh says. 

He sees CJ and Toby leave, sees the light click off, sees the darkness settle around him like a layer of topsoil coming down on top of him.

_Morbid_ , he thinks. He lays down on the couch and holds his arms around his stomach like that’ll keep it from flipping inside-out.


End file.
